Los Angeles newcomers Pagoto smash crossover thrash and sludge together into a filthy, high-energy hybrid that owes as much to hardcore warehouses as it does to metal stages. Formed in 2024, they bring the reckless aggression of the LA underground to both styles at once.

Flint, Michigan's Pain forge thrash metal shaped by the industrial rust and relentless edge of one of America's hardest-hit cities. Since 2020 they've been delivering fast, aggressive metal that sounds like it has something to prove.

Santa Clarita's Pain Catalyst fuse groove-heavy riffs with thrash velocity, arriving at a punishing sound rooted in the heavier side of California metal. Formed in 2022, they channel mechanical precision and physical aggression into tightly wound songs.

Emerging from Portland, Maine in 2022, Pain Descendant craft black metal with the bleakness of the North Atlantic winter baked into every riff. Harsh and uncompromising, the band draws on raw second-wave tradition without softening any of its edges.

Pain in Silence blend deathcore breakdowns with death metal extremity, building songs that alternate between technical aggression and full-on sonic devastation. The Indiana-born band has been honing their punishing hybrid sound since 2017.

Long Island's Pain of Truth deal in unrelenting New York hardcore that worships at the altar of Madball, Agnostic Front, and Hatebreed. Their punishing beatdown style and pit-ready anthems have made them one of the most respected acts in the modern NYHC revival, delivering no-frills, two-stepping fury with working-class authenticity.

Houston industrial noise/experimental. Dark, abrasive, and deeply unsettling.

Ruthless Death Metal from Houston.

Painkiller is an American avant-garde power trio formed in 1991 by composer and alto saxophonist John Zorn, bassist and producer Bill Laswell, and former Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris, creating a radical and largely unprecedented fusion of free jazz improvisation and grindcore extremity. Zorn's convulsive saxophone lines, Laswell's dub-inflected bass grooves, and Harris's blastbeat-driven percussion produced a genuinely confrontational body of work that expanded into ambient and dub territories on later releases. The group reunited in 2024 and released the album Samsara later that year, with Harris performing on electronics rather than drums.